“No one else has school. But you just have to get over it. It’s not like we’re not going to practice. We’re here.”

The Titans always are here this early. Sometimes earlier.

Practice began at 5 a.m. for the first week of tryouts.

Most high school sports teams, with the notable exception of swimmers, practice after school. Most immediately after school. But the Boylan girls, like some small schools, have to get creative because the school’s boys and girls basketball teams share one gym. That means the Titan girls always practice before school.

Which means they eat and sleep Titan basketball.

“I sleep in my practice clothes every night,” sophomore forward Devin Mack says. “That way I can sleep an extra five or 10 minutes and don’t have to get up and find practice clothes to put on in the morning.”

Practice jerseys double as pajamas for most Titans.

“It saves a lot of time,” senior center Maria Ludeke says. “You want to sleep as long as possible.”

More sleep also means less breakfast, so the players eat in the locker room at 8:30 a.m. while they shower and get ready for school to begin at 9.

“It was weird at first,” said team manager Barb Roman, who takes her turn providing breakfast this day. “But you just get used to everyone walking around, some taking showers, some eating.”

The Titans take the same attitude toward early morning practices: they simply get used to it. The colder it is, though, the harder that gets.

“I think about practice in the middle of the night when it gets so cold,” Ludeke says. “This morning, it was like Siberia.”

It’s no fun for anyone. Including parents of the younger Titans.

“My mom drove me the first year,” says Roman, in her third year as team manager. “She was kind of cranky. She didn’t really talk in the morning.”

Maybe she was half-asleep.

“I usually try to wake up before the time I have to drive,” says Harner, a backup center.

No one really wants to be awake.

“It’s really hard to get up,” junior guard Deborah Hilby says. “And then you have to get up out in the cold.”

At least the side doors are open Wednesdays. On Mondays, the players, who park in the front lot, have to circle the school and enter through the back doors in a small lot reserved for teachers.

“It’s the worst walk on Monday mornings,” Roman says. “We have coats and hoodies and pants, all bundled up to walk all the way back there. And it’s scary because it’s dark. You don’t know what’s there. The other day, I was walking and a bird was there. It flew away and scared me. It was silent and then this bird flew out of nowhere.”

It’s also silent at first inside the gym. And dark. The only light is the scoreboard clock, counting down 30 minutes to the start of practice, which begins the second the clock hits zero.

Dark is good.

“I want to go to sleep when I come in here,” Ludeke says.

“It’s nice having it be dark when we first come in,” senior guard Amanda Nolan says. “We can relax a little longer before we start.”

When the clock hits 2 minutes, the lights click on.

“It’s a rude awakening in the morning when they turn those lights on,” Harner says.

The message is clear.

“Got to get up,” Harner says. “Got to start practicing.”

The Titans don’t ease into practice. Boylan coach Kim Connell begins with a fast-break drill. Then it’s on to crushers, with the 15 Titans racing from one baseline to the other and back again. Then it’s on to scrimmaging and other drills.

On it goes for two hours. Each drill run to the second according to the scoreboard. “Ms. Connell has to run everything off a clock,” Roman says.

The Titans don’t mind. They’re used to it.

“When I first started, I couldn’t believe it was already morning. I thought I’d just laid down,” says Mack, the Titans’ leading scorer. “But you get used to it. And it’s fun. This way, you get up and get in and after school you can go straight home and do whatever.”

And this way, you get breakfast in the locker room, brought or prepared by a different Titan every day.

“It was odd at first, but after practice, when your stomach is empty, you look forward to that breakfast,” Mack says. “It’s nice.

“You never know what you are going to get. One day you might have pancakes. The next day you might have doughnuts.”

Mack brings a skillet with eggs, sausage and bacon. “My mom makes it,” she says. “If I make it, I have to get up an extra hour early, and I can’t risk that.”

Ludeke’s mom makes scones with fruit. “I try to make it healthy, because a lot of people bring doughnuts, and doughnuts aren’t very good after our hard practices.”

Today is Roman’s day. That means pancakes.

“No one else brings pancakes, and I’m good at making chocolate chip pancakes,” says Roman, who mixes up the batter with her mom at 5:45 a.m., then cooks them on a portable griddle on the locker room floor.

Her teammates agree.

“They are excellent,” Mack says. “We request them every time she has breakfast.”

Cooking on a locker room floor doesn’t sound like anyone’s first choice. The same with anonymously practicing at 6:30 a.m. “Not even many people in this school know,” Harner says. “When you tell them, they ask, ‘How is it possible that you get up every day.’ ”

It’s not just possible; it’s the best choice the Titans had.

And by going through this together, even in the coldest weather, it has turned into an excellent choice.

“We are all in this together,” Ludeke says. “It helps us be a team.”

“When we have breakfast in the locker room,” Mack says, “it brings us closer together. We’re like a family.”

Assistant Sports Editor Matt Trowbridge can be reached at 815-987-1383 or mtrowbridge@rrstar.com.